


between the lines

by punkrightnow



Category: Rocket Punch (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon Compliant, F/F, Sharing a Bed, Unresolved Tension, very little beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27675103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrightnow/pseuds/punkrightnow
Summary: Suyun pauses, just long enough for Yunkyoung to know that her nonchalance isn’t totally genuine. “I mean, you could share my bed, if you want.”
Relationships: Kim Suyun/Seo Yunkyoung
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	between the lines

**Author's Note:**

> ha ha ha guess who just vomited out 2k words of rocket punch rpf instead of homework or the other fic ive been working on for months??? thats right, im a tool
> 
> for reference, this fic is based on [this episode](https://youtu.be/NZzVUnawFWQ) of id rocket punch, with the dorm layout taken from [this episode](https://youtu.be/345zSz9LuvA) of punch time. basically suyun & yeonhee have a peaceful room to themselves while yunkyoung & juri have to share with the maknaes. also worth noting that this is ofc not meant to reflect reality, its just another way for me to procrastinate on my many essays (个_个)
> 
> anyways, enjoy!

On set, there is always a seventy percent chance that Suyun can be found hugging Dahyun or Sohee and grinning like an idiot. It’s this stupid game they’ve invented, where they pretend to be either in love with or jealous of each other depending on whatever garbage next pops into their heads. Yunkyoung watches from the sidelines, rolls her eyes, and grumbles to the camera when it doesn’t feel too weird to bring up. Even if, obviously, they’re just messing around. There’s never a time when someone in Rocket Punch _isn’t_ messing around.

Still.

“Are you jealous?” Dahyun asks on the set of the cheerleading video, in that cute-kid-but-also-bored-teenager voice she’s somehow managed to master.

Yunkyoung pauses. Suyun is watching with her chin propped up on Dahyun’s shoulder, as well as the camera and with it the internet at large on her other side. Not that it matters.

“Why would I be?” she retorts, pulling a face.

Dahyun laughs, bending out of Suyun’s hold. Suyun’s gaze shifts to the far wall, expressing nothing in particular.

“Yunkyoung doesn’t care,” she tells the audience.

“I don’t care at all,” Yunkyoung confirms.

And it’s the truth. Of course she doesn’t care about Suyun’s make-believe love triangle—it’s a game, and it’s funny, and it’s not like _she’d_ want to be in it, anyways. They have choreography to shoot, and she’s still practicing her popping. There’s no time to be bothered with that kind of thing.

Sohee finds them just a few moments after Suyun walks away, and it takes about one millisecond for her and Dahyun to get into a faux-dramatic argument about sharing beds.

“I had to curl up last night, you know that?” Sohee says accusingly, but she’s smiling.

“No, _I_ was the one who didn’t have enough space,” Dahyun argues, also smiling. Lately she’s been even more of a brat than usual.

“No way! I woke up because I was so uncomfortable, you were on your back with your arms all stretched out, I had to sleep like _this_ —” 

Yunkyoung watches with a kind of amazement as they keep bickering, then wanders off, feeling awkward. Being around children (which they very much are) is exhausting. And it’s crazy to her that they can talk like that with zero embarrassment, or do so much skinship all the time, or _share beds_ —Yunkyoung just isn’t cut out for that stuff.

There’s still some time left before they finish the shoot. Yunkyoung drifts around the set, practices her expressions, and rambles to the camera on her own.

Filming wraps up successfully, as always. Rocket Punch is nothing if not reliable. They thank the staff, get their things, and congratulate each other on a job well done—it was fun, and a good performance besides. They leave smiling.

Yunkyoung sits with Suyun on the way home, trying in vain to take a nap as the maknaes squabble in the back seat. After being woken up by Dahyun announcing that she’ll ‘never play with Sohee again’ for the nth time, she sighs, opens her eyes, and resigns herself to staring blankly at the seat in front of her. 

Her eyes flit to the left. Suyun is focused on her phone, no doubt watching some dumb YouTube video. She’s fidgeting with her shirt, hands kept to herself for once. Yunkyoung watches them, mind wandering.

It’s not like the ‘01 line _doesn’t_ do skinship. They’re best friends, constant arguments notwithstanding, and all the members are pretty affectionate with each other anyways. But sometimes she feels like there’s something more careful about the way Suyun handles her, about how often they hug or touch, about their casualness when they do.

“Hey,” she finds herself saying, before she can help it.

Suyun looks up. “Yeah?”

“Why don’t you…why don’t you do those kinds of jokes with me? The ones you do with Dahyun.” She hears the way the words hang in the air, and backtracks. “Not that I _want_ you to, obviously.”

Suyun is quiet. For a moment Yunkyoung thinks she’s going to laugh, or crack a joke, or say something like ‘so you _are_ jealous?’ in that typical annoying Suyun way. Or maybe she doesn’t even know what Yunkyoung means—maybe it’s only Yunkyoung who’s been thinking about it, and now Suyun’s going to have to ask her to explain, and Yunkyoung’s going to feel all stupid and awkward.

Suyun doesn’t do any of those things.

“I dunno,” she says at last. Her voice is neutral, her eyes averted. “It’d be weird.”

“Yeah,” Yunkyoung agrees. She doesn’t feel like asking why.

Suyun returns to her phone, and the car keeps driving. Soon enough they’re back at the dorm, ready to eat, sleep, and wake up to another day of work. The schedules continue, the running gags grow, the cycles repeat. They don’t bring it up again.

The issue with Sohee and Dahyun sharing a bed isn’t just that Yunkyoung finds it odd. It’s also that it’s _extremely annoying,_ especially when it’s midnight and Yunkyoung’s trying to sleep and they won’t stop whispering and giggling and rustling around.

She ends up rolling out of bed like a grumpy old man, scoffing when the bunk below her falls silent. Literally, they are infants. At least they have the decency to restrict it to every few weeks—if not, Yunkyoung might end up convicted of manslaughter.

Yawning, she shuffles into the kitchen, grimacing when the lights come on. She pours herself a cup of water and grabs some bread from the fridge. Here, some kind of silver lining: a midnight snack. 

Then, “Yo,” Suyun says, and Yunkyoung startles so bad she drops it straight onto the floor.

Suyun snorts, then catches herself. “Sorry.”

Yunkyoung just stares blankly at her bread. She turns, taking in Suyun’s rumpled pajamas, lifted cup, and twitches of barely suppressed laughter. 

“Kim. Su. _Yun,”_ she says slowly, hoping the full force of her menace comes across.

Suyun looks very deliberately away, reaching for the water pitcher. “I wouldn’t judge you if you ate it anyway, you know,” she says, pouring.

Yunkyoung gives her a dirty look. “I am _not_ doing that.”

They both turn to look at the bread. It’s a cream bun, still fresh, the top a warm, inviting brown. They aren’t allowed to eat cream buns often.

After a very long pause, Yunkyoung bends down and scoops it up. Suyun bursts out laughing—Yunkyoung smacks her, but she’s laughing too. She bites into it with relish.

“Stop it,” she says, smothering her grin. “The floor isn’t even that dirty, you know.”

“If you say so,” Suyun snickers. 

They stand for a while in comfortable silence, Suyun sipping her water and Yunkyoung slowly demolishing her bread. The cream is delicious, especially when she hasn’t had any in months. And there’s just something nice about being with Suyun in the middle of the night, leaning against the kitchen counter in a little bubble of silence.

“Oh, wait, I just realised—why are you even awake?” Suyun asks with a frown, as Yunkyoung dusts off her hands over the sink.

Finally, free license to complain. “Sohee and Dahyun, those brats,” she begins, scowling. “They’re sharing a bed again and they won’t shut up. Don’t they know I can hear them? Juri’s lucky she doesn’t have to sleep right above them, I’m so jealous. I swear, I want to punch them so bad.”

Suyun raises an eyebrow. “They’re still up? It’s like, half past twelve.”

“I know,” Yunkyoung says miserably. “They’re _children,_ I hate them. It’s like they think they’re having a sleepover or something.”

“Hm,” Suyun says. Then she pauses, just long enough for Yunkyoung to know that her nonchalance isn’t totally genuine. “I mean, you could share my bed, if you want.”

Yunkyoung blinks. Swallows. Meets Suyun’s eyes, and can’t quite read them.

“Oh,” she says, not sure how to react. “Really?”

“Sure,” Suyun says, shrugging. Yunkyoung wonders if she learned this kind of acting at SOPA, while Yunkyoung was off dancing in another department. “I only woke up because I was thirsty, after all. Yeonhee doesn’t snore or anything.”

“Oh,” Yunkyoung says again, although that wasn’t really what she was asking. There are certain boundaries they just don’t cross as easily as the other members—they’ve confirmed as much to each other in meandering, carefully vague conversations. And Yunkyoung’s never really been good with that sort of intimacy, especially not with Suyun.

But at midnight, when everything else is asleep, sometimes it feels like anything is possible.

Yunkyoung wets her lips. “Okay.”

The bed is small, obviously. Yunkyoung is lying on the side by the wall, staring blankly at the shadowy expanse of the upper bunk. In the darkness she is hyper aware of Suyun next to her—every rustle, every fidget, every breath that isn’t quite even. Their legs are brushing, just enough that it’s clear that neither of them are moving away, but not enough to make it anything other than awkward.

Suyun was right, it’s weird. It’s weird, it’s weird, it’s weird.

“Well, it _is_ quieter,” Yunkyoung mumbles. Above them, Yeonhee is sleeping like a log, not moving by even an inch. 

Suyun huffs a laugh. “What, changed your mind?”

It’s a normal question, said in a normal voice. Yunkyoung doesn’t know why it feels weighted. “No thank you,” she snorts. “Anything’s better than those two.”

“Wow, even me?”

“Mm.”

Yunkyoung’s throat is dry, suddenly. She gulps, wincing at the way the sound carries. 

Beside her, she hears Suyun shifting onto her side, then feels a set of eyes boring into her. Stiffly, she turns her head. Suyun’s eyes gleam black in the darkness. Her face is close, much closer than Yunkyoung is usually comfortable with.

“What?” Yunkyoung asks, with a tiny, uncertain laugh.

Suyun shakes her head. “Nothing.” Then she looks down, curling into a ball so that her knees are pressing warmly into Yunkyoung’s thigh, her head just centimetres from Yunkyoung’s chest. Yunkyoung feels the inexplicable urge to turn and do the same. She doesn’t, though.

Her throat is dry again. This is all so _weird._

“Hey,” she mutters.

Suyun makes a noise that sounds something like a response.

“I, um…”

Words come out of her mouth and stop, the sentence freezing in midair. Yunkyoung isn’t honestly sure what she wants to ask. There’s some question inside of her that she can’t quite grasp, some combination of _am I supposed to feel this way?_ and _do you feel it too?_ and _what are we doing, really?_ that’s too embarrassing to voice.

“Should we, um…” _Talk about this. Do something. Address whatever it is we have going on here._

Suyun looks up again. “What?” She’s still disorientingly close, close enough to—well. But her face is unreadable. Yunkyoung wishes, not for the first time, that she wasn’t such a good actor. 

“I don’t know,” she says helplessly. “I don’t know, just—isn’t this weird?”

“Isn’t what weird?”

“You know what I mean,” Yunkyoung huffs. She doesn’t usually like to think about it much—it makes her feel stupid, and anyways their friendship has always been comfortable. But she’s gone this far, she’s said this much. “Don’t play dumb.”

Suyun is silent. It’s nearly one in the morning, by now. Around them, everything is dark and quiet and still. There’s no easy way out.

“Not really,” she murmurs eventually. “Or maybe…maybe I don’t know what you mean.”

 _You’re lying,_ Yunkyoung wants to say, and doesn’t. Something within her is simultaneously disappointed and relieved. They’ve been speaking in implication this whole time, after all, anything dangerous kept safely between the lines. Maybe it’s better this way.

“Okay,” she murmurs back, after a long pause. “Well, then. Good night.”

“Just like that?” Suyun says, sounding amused. “Okay. Good night.”

Suyun curls back up, somehow closer to Yunkyoung than before. Yunkyoung stays flat on her back, trying to relax. The night feels quieter than usual. Tomorrow morning, she already knows that they’ll have gone back to normal.

If they ever figure this out, it is not tonight. 


End file.
